Both patients and patient service providers benefit from products that provide features that increase therapeutic effectiveness, provide additional benefits, provide greater patient comfort and/or reduce patient cost. Part of the patient care services provided by patient service providers includes the administering of certain therapies while a patient is in bed. Such therapies include those that are directly related to the damage caused to the skin of a patient due to long periods of time spent in bed. For example, moving the patients, while in bed, can help prevent, as well as cure, bed sores (decubitus ulcers). In addition, reducing the pressure that the bed exerts on the patient's skin can also help prevent, or cure, bed sores. This can be achieved by providing an inflatable mattress where the weight of a patient can be distributed over a wider area and therefore the pressure on the patient's skin can be greatly reduced, as compared with the pressures exerted by conventional mattresses. However, different patients have different body masses and/or physical characteristics and therefore require different fluid pressures in order to keep the patient elevated above the harder surface of the bed.
As such, it is desirable to strike a balance between having enough fluid pressure in the inflatable mattress to keep the patient elevated above the harder surface of the bed while not having too much pressure so that the inflatable mattress itself becomes too firm.